The smell woke Vyse first and quickly stirred the rest of the village. Acrid haze and musty smoldering turned the blue sky a terrible mix of cold gray with flickers of defiant oranges. Within blistering minutes, all of Horteka was filled with rushed footfalls, coughing villagers, and a general pall of apprehension. A near decade of Valuan oppression made it clear as the finest cut moonstone what was happening; it wasn't an attack. There were no cannon shots or bomb bursts. No clanging soldiers marched through the walkways. This was a different kind of violence. A deep act of sacrilege, a horrid scarring of beauty itself.
Fire. The world was burning. The land, the lush and wonderful islands under the Green Moon were ablaze. Not content to search the forest for the Green Moon Crystal or precious ores through the vile use of forced labor, the Valuans had turned to the furious speed of flash burning and deforestation. Tika'tika called out from a vantage point high above, his voice ringing through the village with such clarity that it brought all panic to a halt. Powerful, assured, angry. As if he might leap miles to slay the offending beast.
"An Ironhead ship beyond imagining," he explained urgently. "Spitting flame like a que'lak's pryes spell. The lantern bellows in a steel claw that dangles above the trees. It burns everything in sight.
Vyse rushed from his lodgings immediately, scooping up his cutlasses and other gear in a hurry, calmbouring through crisscrossing wooden walkways before leaping onto a bronze-glazed pole downward towards the entrance to the village. He didn't know if the pole had been fashioned for precisely this sort of emergency situation or if it was made an everyday convenience for navigating Horteka's layed arrangement but he was grateful for the rapidity. For a moment, he almost felt like he was back at home and scurrying to the Albatross for another raid on the Valuans.
The difference was that this wasn't some pirate act of defiance; it was a matter of true life and death for the people of Ixa'taka. Whatever mechanical monstrosity was scorching the skies to the north could easily slip towards Horteka and the neighboring villages. Perhaps the invaders no longer had need of Ixa'takan "labor" or they'd simply had grown irritated with pockets of resistance. Either way, Vyse could see from the scrambling warriors and shocked faces that this was a new kind of violence.
Aika and Fina had reached the village entrance first; his fellow raider fumed with anger and seemed wound up enough to leap into the sky and battle the Valuans with her bare hands. Fina's face twisted with apprehension as thoughts of her unfortunate entanglement in the Meridian night played at the edges of her mind. The fear was subtle and partially masked in a half-borrowed display of authority as villagers ran towards "Quetya" for advice. Her voice carried above the commotion like a ship captain's.
"Someone said there are tunnels closer to the base of the village," she noted. "Take the children and elderly down and away from the village center. If the smoke carries further, it might choke lungs."
A sharp-eyed woman flanked by a cohort in ceremonially chalky robes made her way through the crowd.
"The winds are screaming," she noted as a gust tossed leaves off nearby trees. "We will try to calm them but it requires time and focus."
Cupil emerged off Fina's wrist and bobbed before his master. "Can you help them?" Fina asked.
Meeep! Cueeee!
The Silvite cast her fine green eyes back at the woman. "You're a mage," she noticed. "My.. familiar here can share his strength and bolster your spells." The words were sufficient to send Cupil and the mages towards the far edges of the village. Vyse paused for the slightest moment as he regarded Fina.
She sounded like a Blue Rogue.
"Vyse!" Aika's voice brought him back to the present as she rushed over.
"It doesn't sound like any ship we've tangled with," the rogue mused. "Have either of you looked out from the docs yet? That had a good enough view of the islands."
"Just came from there," Aika noted. "Tika'tika's got the better view up top."
Stomping footsteps clattered above the tumult as Drachma hitched toward the with a face stern as any he'd worn while chasin Rhaknam. The fiery wind strayed about and somewhere beneath the soot and anger, memories rustled within the fisherman that added fresh intensity to his steps.
"Sighted the damn'd eyesore off the dock," the old man began as he reached the group. His voice held an uncharacteristic disquiet. "S'far off but'n the right glass help a'spy the flag: streaks 'o green."
Vyse tilted his head. "Fourth Fleet?"
"That's Research and Development," Aika noted. "Admiral De Loco."
"Why would Valua send their chief engineer to the edge of the world?"
Drachma gestured at the chaos around them as if it explained everything. "Ye gots sky what none ken pose challenge, land brim pack'd with ores, 'an souls what're forced to work and build as ye demand."
"Villagers were saying this is new," Aika stated. "Something's changed.."
Fina gazed about the village and found a new face at every turn. A warrior streaking fresh paint upon his face in anticipation of invasion, small children who turns from their parents and spared a desperate glance at "Quetya" and her companions, the burning glare of an old man whose aged has turn his skin as hard as leather and whose eyes held a deep and bitter distrust. Songs of sorrow slipped through her heart, visions of panicked stars danced on her peripheral sense, and all the energy within the continent seemed to retreat from the violence on the horizon and congeal into a dense singularity resting on her shoulders.
"The difference is us," the Silvite finally realized.
"A keen reflection, Silver One," praised a tired old voice at the group's side. Elder Xolin stood impassively with Tika'Tika at his side; glazed eyes came to rest upon Fina. "The echo came many suns ago."
"Echo?" Vyse asked. "What do you mean?
"A cry from far beyond our moon which I heard within my dreams," Xolin explained. "Of a family saved and people given hope. Of lords despairing and a false goddess slighted."
Tika'Tika ruffled rooster-like in affirmation. "The Elder dreamt of a toppling giant," he said briskly. "Soon after that, new Ironhead ships came from the West as if searching for something."
Vyse started to paint a picture in his mind. He saw crowds of people cheering as Valuan soldiers bleed within their own vile coliseum. He remembered their swelling cheer as the executioner fell. It wasn't merely their arrival that changed things; they'd already brought change to Ixa'taka weeks ago without ever meaning to. In slighting the Empire and seizing upon their first Moon Crystal, they'd spurred the Fifth Fleet into something more aggressive than mining minerals and testing weapons. And yet…
"We kick some fear into the Upper City and people we never met pay the price.."
"That feels wrong," Aika hummed. "Valua was out here long before we met Fina."
Xolin gave the slightest shrug. "A leaf falls from the high bough," he began, lifting a tired hand and letting it list downward for emphasis. "And across the sky, an island cracks into pieces."
Tika'Tika twitched as if to bray. "Greed called them here years ago," he said firmly. "But only now do they burn without taking. Only now that Quetya is revealed to us."
"Whatever yer jabberin 'bout ken be stowed fer later," Drachma ordered crudely. Even with the language barrier, Xolin and Tika'tika came to a halt. "Ship's out north, which'n means.."
"They're trying to smoke out the king," Vyse concluded. "Why search the forest for ages if you can burn it down and leave no ground to hide within?"
Fina looked towards Tika'Tika. "You meant to guide us to your sovereign later today."
The older man flittered his head back and forth. "I cannot reveal his retreat while the Ironheads sail within view," he exacted. "We must drive them away."
Vyse nodded. "I don't care what the ship's deal is," he boasted. "We're knockin' it outta the sky."
All eyes instinctively turned to Drachma. The old fisherman glared in return with his one good eye packed to the brim with annoyance. There was, however, no protesting. He affected a sigh if only for the sake of putting on a good show before punctuating the display with a serious nod.
"I know them glances," he began with quiet resignation. "Iff'n were set on a fight, we oughta be about it. Ain't keen t'guss up the Jack fer fool's errands but this.."
Somehow the smoke seemed to thicken.
"It dun seem so foolish."
Aika tossed a thumb in Tika'Tika's direction. "Bird Boy's taggin' along," she explained.
The hunter leaned towards Drachma, masked face scant inches from the grizzled man's face.
"Fine," huffed after a moment. "Let's sow some Valuan oats 'err it's too late."
The Little Jack darted through Green Moon glimmered skies with a speed beyond anything in recent memory. The deceptive fishing vessel blasted away from Horteka with such a bellowing kick of red moonstone-powered might that the departure was confused for divine magicks that sent Quetya vering off towards the dread Ironhead vessel burning the land. With the horrid South Ocean wins little more than a memory, sailing had never felt faster or easier. Vyse's hands rested comfortably upon the wheel and the clear sky, bearing only the most modest of landmasses to avoid, might as well have been one of Cape Claudia's fine racing speedways.
The blue skies hardly lasted as the Little Jack drew north and passed over the forested land of Ixa'taka's largest landmass. The smoke grew heavy and air shifted darker as they approached the fires. Tika'Tika, whose interest had been glued to the Little Jack's strange gauges and meters, broke away from his intense scrutiny to look out at the burning landscape.
Vyse didn't need to imagine the look on Tika'Tika's face. The sheer intensity of his hatred could not be contained by his mask and as heat started to radiate upon the Little Jack' s hull, the hunter actually removed his adornment as if keeping it on one more second would cause his head to burst into splinters. Sharp green eyes pierced through a face pocked with scars and the tell-tale tracings of animal claws. Under any other circumstance, it would be an intimidating display but that power was drained by the anguish draped over the man's expression.
The hunter raised a hand upwards as if to draw the Green Moon downward. "To injure a tree is to injure the kingdom," he explained. "All is one."
Vyse wondered if he would understand the sentiment without Fina sharing her vision with him the night before. Tika'tika did not know it—or perhaps he somehow did—but the web of life sprawled throughout the Green Continent was intricately woven. The merest glimpse of those connections filled Vyse's heart with a deep appreciation for the world beyond anything he'd felt peering at the sky from atop Pirate Isle. As the Little Jack drew within range of the violence, Vyse's thoughts came into focus. He hated the Valuan Empire but it wasn't until Fina entered his life that the breadth of their violence truly revealed itself. The economic oppression of the Lower City and the ravaging of the Green Continent were gears within one grand and evil machine.
But was that violence unique to Valua? Vyse hesitated to say that it was. If some enterprising Meridian had arrived in Ixa'taka and had the means to pilfer the land and build up an industry, the continent would still experience this kind of cruelty. Greed transcended national boundaries.
There was horrible truth in the flames and everyone on the Little Jack saw something that was both the same and somehow different. Vyse saw the unchecked power of human enterprise, Aika beheld a sharper version of imperial violence, Fina watched as universes died before her and heard her Elders' whisper in her ears, Tika'tika felt the surety of the natural world buckle to an extent previously unimaginable. Every flame flicker and crackling brought clarity.
Drachma saw something very different. Buried in the flames, he gazed upon his own vanity.
Something had been ignited ever since Nasrad, like a trail of gunpowder struck with a match. He departed from Maramba in chase of Rhaknam only for the entire affair to be some Imperial admiral's ploy. The hatred in his soul, which he'd held onto for years and which he felt so deeply that it threatened to crush him on a daily basis, led him all too easily ino deception. When Vyse took him aside and begged him to let it all go, Drachma understood that the boy was right to make that demand. Drachma had seen the terrible might of an old world Gigas and now he was seeing the unbridled scale of Valua's hunger. It made his worries seem so small.
Don't let go…
The whisper in his ear grew more urgent. Sweat built upon his palm as the fire kicked up images of his past. A wife wasted by disease that could not be cured. A ship splintered by Rhaknam's callous disregard. He'd been wronged and accepting a world larger than himself was weakness.
Yet if Drachma was to look back upon his life, wouldn't it resemble the smoldering jungle before him? How many kindnesses has he dismissed and how many people had he burned on his quest for revenge?As the old fisherman looked at the devastation, he didn't find some sense of political purpose or newfound need to save the world. He saw his own reckless indignation.
Whatever truth lay within the flames and whatever resolve was found in spite of Valua's abject violence, the source was hard to miss. A lone ship hovered above the jungle, hull glinted with polished metal and arrayed with subcannons. The dread "claw" that Tika'tika spoke of in Horteka revealed itself to be an inverted crane similar to those spotted in drydock but possessed of extra bends and articulations that allowed it to twist and extend alike mechanical arm; a massive tank with three nozzle was gripped firmly at the end. Each nose blurted fire upon the world. The make was unlike any other ship within the armada. It was a small ship nearer in size to the Little Jack or a patrol Spectre but bore signs of intense customization. The shape resembled those unfortunate "submarines'' that were dropped into Lower Sky in abortive forays and might've looked as harmless if not for a triple array of cannons on the bow and armored dome amidship that appeared to be the bridge. Unlike most ships, the bridge did not seem to have larger viewport windows.
Vyse guided the Little Jack through hazy sky, drawing closer towards the enemy vessel while keeping out of conventional subcannon ranges.
"How can something that small do this much?"
"Fourth Fleet'd rip a cannon off the Grand Gate 'an slap it to a corvette iff'n they could," Drachma noted before spittin on the floor. "It ain't about what's sensical. S'about crumplin' as much power in th'frame as ken be fathom'd."
"The Jack 's not that different," Aika concluded, her eyes glaring out at the Valuan ship. "There's hardly a wire, pipe, gear, spring, or piston that's not kitbash'd from elsewhere."
"I ain't 'bout to fix some gangly arm on m'ship," Drachma protested.
"I can hardly believe that thing's flying," Vyse remarked with a nod at their foe.
Fina hummed in thought. "That would mean either a lightweight hull or a great deal of engine power. The Lynx seemed rather new but still used steel.."
"Not much harder than that," Vyse mused. Fina was about to speak again when Aika chimed in.
"The propellers along the side are too small," the redhead said with a point of her fingers that trailed from the aero engines on the ship's side to a protrusion of shimmering plug pistons that peppered the front hull. "But those things are letting off plenty of moonstone fumes.."
Vyse whistled. "Experimental weapons, potent engines with special exhaust. Should be fun!"
Tika'tika did not understand much of the conversation. All he knew was that there was a grand beast to hunt and that this outlander ship would make a fine steed for the battle. The masked man sniffed the smoke-touched air and scampered towards the door to the deck.
"You need my eyes," he said confidently before tilting his head to Aika. "You have a way to hear me from the outside? From above the roar of ships and magicks?"
"Little thing what looks like a horn in the crow's nest," she explained. "Are you really going out there?"
"You need my eyes," Tika'tika repeated before stepping outside and scurrying upwards.
A coldsteel hand containing a small, boxy speaker jutted into Vyse's field of view. "An yer be need'n this," Drachma growled. "S'fer the talk-box what I pilfer'd from the lady admiral."
"Figure we should introduce ourselves?" Vyse asked with a smirk.
"Might as well put some fear in 'em."
Vyse chuckled even as righteousness swelled within his heart. He took a breath before bringing the microphone to his mouth and holding down. The Valuans would have a single chance to flee or else face as much fury as the Little Jack could summon. He was hoping they didn't flee.
"Attention Valuan vessel, this is Vyse Dyne of the Little Jack… "
Andrés De Loco couldn't be happier. The transfer from Valua to Ixa'taka felt like a punishment when Lord Admiral Galcian first made his decree. There was so much work to be done in the homeland from innovations to the Upper City's moonstone grid all the way to what was sure to be the crown jewel in the Armada's fleet. It seemed nonsensical to the point of comedy that he would not be allowed to carry out his work and all the more insulting that Alfonso would share a post on the Green Continent. Had the Empire's greeted inventor become a babysitter?
How wrong he'd been in his assessment. The Green Continent was not a prison; it was a playground. Let Alfonso tire himself on petty cruelties and childish tantrums back at the mines. De Loco could care less for whatever pain awaited the workers at Moonstone was plenty of sky to be had and that meant plenty of room to test his latest experiments. De Loco cared little for politics and now that he was far away from the capital, he saw with fresh perspective how the tiresome bickering of nobles and clout chasing "scientists" slowed his research projects. Under the Green Moon at the far edges of the world, he'd found freedom.
"Tales of giants and crystals," he scoffed under his breath. "I'll find Lord Galcian's magickal rock if it pleases him but no Old World creature can match my Chameleon."
He let his hand stroke the armrest of his captain's chair. There was nothing but cold metal underneath although De Loco could not feel it through his thick gloves. Such was the price of genius. What comforts he lost to sickness as a child, he found ample satisfaction in the exercise of his mind. Many were the moments his body ached with pain but it was more than an acceptable sacrifice in the name of progress. What was pain in the face of greatness?
He could not feel the flames' heat from the Chameleon 's bridge or underneath the safety of his suit but the crimson dance outside the viewport sang of the ship's potential. Modular, adaptable, and ever evolving. His flagship could switch out weapons as needed and meet any task with the right tool. Though the flame cannon was first designed as a weapon to sweep decks free of mages or else overheat enemy engines, it had so many uses beyond military applications. The tangled Ixa'takan jungle hid more secrets than moon crystals. Countless ore deposits rest underneath the timber and mud; not merely enough for weapons but enough to revise infrastructure in Valua and build towering cities here under the Green Moon.
De Loco turned to his Vice-Captain and beckoned her closer with a curl of his fingers. Julieta had been one of the keenest minds in his laboratory and only proven herself further in the field. When questions filtered his way—outrageous demands that he remove her from her station and accept a career military man—he'd dismissed them. He didn't need unimaginative soldiers among his crew. He needed visionaries. He needed forward-thinking intellectuals.
"What are the conditions of a utopia, Vice-Captain?" A modest question delivered eagerly.
Julieta hummed beneath her armet before finally speaking. "Perfection."
"Harmony amongst all variables," De Loco affirmed. "Everything in order."
"If I may, Admiral?" his second offered with caution. "You've forgotten something."
De Loco paused dramatically. Were it not for the need of constant monitoring at their stations, he imagined that the bridge crew would wait with baited breath as well. Few dared to provide even the smallest inkling of intellectual sparring with their lord and while he encouraged creative solutions, De Loco knew that contrariness could be a poison if ill-directed and nothing made him more furious than watching a keen mind argue for the sake of argument itself. His lips curled into the smallest of frowns before nodding at Julieta. She'd proven herself sharp enough that her conclusions were never frivolous even if she was sometimes given to sentiment.
"It's imaginary," Julieta explained. "It's a thought experiment and nothing else. That kind of society is impossible and inherently contra-"
A fuming seer jolted through De Loco's body. Imaginary? Impossible?!
"Idiocy!" the admiral howled from within his sealed environment suit. A quaking finger pointed out at the burning fields. "Look! Look, damn it! Don't you see?! Don't you understand?!"
How could she disappoint him like this? She might as well have stabbed a dagger in his back. What deficiency had temporarily claimed his beloved compatriot? How was that even one of his hand-picked subordinates failed to grasp the importance of his work? It was infuriating.
"There it is! Right there! All it takes is the proper will and the right tool for the job! It starts with fire and ends in rapturous accomplishments! Supremacy! Purity! Utopia!"
If anyone else understood, it was Lord Galcian. He was an arrogant bastard but De Loco couldn't say that he lacked vision. Empress Teodora's ambition was admirable but her comfortable life blinded her to possibilities. The Valuan Empire was a tangle of arcane customs, unimaginative nobles, and cupidity. De Loco had thrived by virtue of his intellect but even that was not enough to stop the empress from looking at him with disdain as if he was a sick huskra.
Utopia..
What was it really? It certainly wasn't a nation swayed by weak minds hyperfocused on blood lineage. So long as Valua was governed by a scant few noble houses and their petulant sovereign, the nation would never realize its full potential. It would stagnate and the only person who had ever been so bold to admit as much to him was Galcian Abrantes Bardales. He only had some inkling of the Lord Admiral's master plan—he could very well prove to be nothing more than a power-monger with a silver tongue—but it hardly mattered. Between Galcian and Teodora, only of them offered a pathway towards the society De Loco dreamed of. Be it through the Moon Crystals or man-made designs, the dawn of a nation built by merit and intellect drew near. De Loco would burn everything that stood in the way of that glorious enlightenment.
A trilling beep quavered from a nearby console, causing the radioman to lean forward in confusion. It was not the beeping itself that was surprising; it was that the signal rang at all in the remote Ixa'taxan sky. They were being hailed over the radio but that was impossible. There were no accompanying ships and the Chameleon was far outside the range of Moonstoone Mountain's broadcast. The savages might have stolen materiel but they'd never be able to properly hail another ship. No, De Loco reckoned, something else was afoot.
"Attention Valuan vessel, this is Vyse Dyne of the Little Jack. I say again: this is Vyse Dyne of the Little Jack . This is your first and only warning. Withdraw or we will fire."
A pause as everyone on the Chameleon 's bridge reckoned with the reality that someone dared to give them orders. Clean Meridian accented "common" and a brashness that seemed to belong to a man much older than the runt on the other end of the line. Somehow, in spite of the shock and the string on her captain's rebuke, Julieta spoke up."
"Can't be anything other than one of our radios," she stated confidently. "And then name, it's.."
De Loco cackled to the point of squealing. "The rogue who slipped through the Grand Gate," he said with a strange hunger. "The Blue Storm's son. Vyse. Which means the Silvite is there too."
"How did they manage to reach the Green Continent?" the radioman asked aloud.
"It doesn't matter!" De Loco shouted. "This means we're close! They're searching for the crystal! Oohohoho! This is a good day! We'll burn them out of the sky like a mosquito!"
The radio crackled again. "I repeat: withdraw or we will fire. You have two minutes."
De Loco might've been impressed if not for the fact that his foe was so far out of depth that even the harshest threats meant nothing. As the Chameleon turned to face their enemy, De Loco spied little more than a fishing boat. The engine pace indicated intense modifications on par with some of the armada's ships but the vessel was small even if it bore armor and an ostentatious harpoon cannon. Andrés De Loco was not the same level of tactician as some of his peers—he freely would admit that Gregorio or Vigoro had a better sense for the intricacies of battle—but he didn't need to worry about stratagems. Between the Chameleon 's sturdy hull and the oppressive heat of the flame cannon, it would be a miracle for the Rogue's ship to slip within a reasonable distance to use its main weapon. It might've escaped Valua's home defenses but it would not escape the cutting edge technology of his beloved Chameleon .
It took little more than a wave to call one of his aids over and secure a speaker. De Loco suppressed a cackle before speaking. "This is Admiral Andrés De Loco, chief of the Fourth Fleet and leader of Her Majesty's Research and Development Bureau. I decline your demand."
A slight pause and a crackle. "Admiral, shut down your weapons and fall ba-"
"Shut up!" De Loco spat back into the speaker. "Don't give me that fancy talk. Stop trying to sound like a proper captain; you're not! I know who you are, Vyse Dyne. You're a brute who got lucky and nothing else! This is where it ends! This is where you burn! Burn, burn!"
"You're gonna find that's easier said than done," the cocksure reply came. Too confident.
De Loco felt his slapdash'd sense of decorum continue to slip. If Julieta's lapse of judgment had been a subtle nudge towards the edge, Vyse's lack of respect was a shove straight over the cliff. Whether amongst his own men or manifest in foes impotently blasting the unescapable might of his inventions, the world was brimming with those who failed to grasp that the pathway towards a better society—the pathway towards utopia—was not clean or simple. That future was only made manifest by might and destruction that brought about a clean slate to build upon.
It was something only extraordinary men could build. He was such a man and the Chameleon was the scythe he'd use to separate the wheat from the caff. Perhaps one day, there would be no need for such weapons as flame cannons or torpedoes. To some extent, De Loco welcomed that say and yet for the moment he reared back and let loose with stabbing laughter.
That day was not today. Today was a red day, and Andrés De Loco loved a red day.
He clicked the speaker once more. "Whisper a prayer to whatever imaginary pirate god you wish; nothing will save you from my beloved Chameleon ."
The following pause was longer than any before but when Vyse replied, his voice was somehow ever more damnably confident than before. "It's your funeral, De Loco."
The young sailor says "age is no guarantee of efficiency." The senior admiral retorts that "youth is not a guarantee of innovation." Vyse Dyne, for all of his success, was a seventeen year old pirate who wasn't even the captain of his own ship when the Little Jack and Chameleon first tangled. Andrés De Loco had been an admiral for nearly a decade. His contributions to Valua's fleet reconstruction in the years after the Valua-Nasr war—with innovations sure to provide an edge for any future conflict—shot him through the ranks and while he did not have the tactical wherewithal of Admiral Vigoro or the encyclopedic knowledge of Gregorio, De Loco had a vicious streak that guided him well in battles. And he had weapons for every occasion.
I must break the illusion of our story's time and place for a moment, dear reader, to opine that we've long since proven that it is the ingenuity of a captain that matters more than the material might of their foe save for causes of extreme technological disparity. The story of Vyse Dyne is the story which proves that guile and gumption outstripes gear and gunnery. I could, if so desired, paint the picture sealed away in the captain's journals or Pinta's tactical analyses.
The Little Jack processed a devastating weapon in the Harpoon Cannon and needed to simply position itself in the proper trajectory for a clear shot. Such was the tactic that crippled Recumen long enough to turn the crew's attention to the Lynx in the Nasrad Desert. But the Harpoon Cannon was a weapon designed in Valua, rejected by Imperial R&D as too costly to mass produce, and bearing two major weaknesses. The first was the time required to properly channel magicks into the moonstone frame; the other was that if you missed a shot, it took significant time to retract the harpoon and fire again. De Loco knew this well.
The Chameleon seemed preternaturally disposed to ward off attempts to use the Harpoon Cannon. Between the extreme heat of the flame cannon preventing a traitional approach vector for the Little Jack 's main batteries and the lack of visibility limiting angles for the Harpoon Cannon, the battle seemed doomed to failure. De Loco, true to his vicious streak, hovered outside of viable distances and spewed flame from his cannons at great length. The Little Jack 's engine grew hotter and hotter; no level of purple moonstones or coil adjustments could cool the rising temperatures in spite of Aika's best efforts. Something needed to change, and fast.
It came first when Fina rigged the magick cannons for a volley of wevles and crystales swells that transformed fire into steam that mingled with smoke and heat until there was no visibility at all but a misty haze worthy of Rhakham himself. Then, through the sweltering pallor.. something hit the Chameleon that ignited its sin-spewing weapon into cinder and sent the ship limping away lest their own engines fail. Aika maintains this was little more than a lucky cannon shot but Vyse gives credit to Tika'tika, whose eyes viewed the battle from high in the crow's nest and provided views that no one on the Jack 's bridge could've calculated.
The truth is ever in the middle but it isn't always the most exciting of things. Indeed, we know the truth; Tika'tika's commands to the bridge did lead to trajectory adjustments that, through skill or fate, crushed the Chameleon 's weapon. There's debate as to if it was a traditional shell or a crystales' shard that pierced fuel tube, letting in oxygen that ignited fire and moonstones but either way, the weapon was dismantled in an explosion that tossed metal shards to the wind.
This is not the story told in Ixa'taka. The story you will hear from Horteka to Jilotzingo is one that of one man's faith and an impossible act. It is Tika'tika's story, one which he does nothing to confirm or deny, and one which will outlast even the more realistic tales. For myth, even the most nascent forms, are far more stubborn things than facts. So the story is told:
The Green Land screams a wailing woe which wavers wide into the winds. For all in one and a burn so fervid, not wrought since the days of Necoc Yaotl, forces the blood of all beings under the moon to burn with blistering bane. All save for Quetya, who does not weep aboard her vessel but instead sees with eyes keener than any elders; the sheen of glimmer unravels like a carpet as each thread rots and retreats and recoils from the Ironhead's fire. The boy at the vessel's helm—what they called "Jack" but we call "Roc's Bane"—was not yet a full fledged warrior yet his hands found purpose and power in the putrid plumes of smoke rising from the frightened forest. The Goddess' vessel danced spritely.
For all of this, divine light shielding the Roc's Bane as our silver'd sister ensorcelled shields against Ironhead's fury, the Roc's Bane was no invincible ramjet. It bore the Goddess but was wrought by Man and like our own ships, the suffocating sky smote stone simmers. Drawing near to the Ironhead's dragon simmer spelled doom and above it all, a lone hawk watched. His name was Tika'tika.
Tika'Tika, son of Ixtli and trained by Tika'Rika in mattersof hunt, blessed by the Green Moon with eyes that saw through deep jungle shadows and far deep into skies. Tika'Tika who shot the Varkis Lord from its death-dive darting at the summit of Cotopaxi. Tika'Tika who would see the world entire alongside Quetya.
Bow drawn and held for what felt like hours yet no pain building in his arm, Tika'Tika held firm and waited. For the honest hunter hones his heart as assuredly as his hand. If the battle lasted years, he would wait for the proper moment for his arrow to arc appealingly at the Ironhead's exposed heart. Be it the stray neck of a commander or the unknowable mechanisms of metal that it might wedge like a stone in a mill.
He would wait. Watching, willing, wondering, and, wiling until the proper moment. Which soon came.
The Roc's Bane shook with man's ingenuity and Quetya's unchecked magicks until a spiral of wind and ice flashed into flame and fumed fog denser than any cloud ever forged under the Green Moon. The heat died and Tika'Tika heard the wind whisper sweetly in his ear. Now was the fateful moment.
Green incantations glistened emerald beads upon his arrow until they glowed gangrenous with magick'd poison. The old antithesis of the Moon's healing: Noxi. The inverse Green magicks known only to the finest warriors and sanctioned healers for to poison one was to poison all. But the Ironheads were not of the Moon's light and their sacrilege would not be forgiven. When the wind whispered, Tika'Tika answered.
His bow released. His arrow rose upwards through the steam, illuminated only by green light. Higher and higher, a single venomous tip of magick'd vengeance that bore the hope of a people.
It flew. It flew. It flew. It struck.
The haze parted and Tika'Tika, the hunter that put all others to shame, marveled at how his arrow rested deep in the Ironhead's flame-spewing lantern. Noxi magicks ate at the metals, melting them into meaningless mash until a burstin explosion rocked the sky. Deprived of its dragon's breath, the Ironhead ship spun sideways until a series of rippling bursts popped from its thickened hide like child's firecrackers until the ship turned and fled.
No finer shot could be possible. For what use was fire and steel in the face of faith and skill? What use was hate and greed when matched with a deep breath and righteous calm. They called it the Chameleon but on that day it could not hide from veridian justice. So the story is told, and will be told under the Green Moon from now until forever.